Flock Group Inc., doing business as Flock Safety, is a privately held American manufacturer and operator of surveillance hardware and software, particularly automated license plate recognition (ALPR), mass video surveillance, gunfire locator systems, and software to integrate data gathered by these technologies. Founded in 2017, Flock operates such systems under contract with law enforcement agencies, neighborhood associations, and private property owners. , Flock says it operates in over 6,000 communities across 49 US states, and performs over 20 billion vehicle scans in the US every month. Flock Safety's network consists of cameras, image recognition, and machine learning, which share data with police departments.
Flock markets their services to law enforcement, homeowner associations and similar community organizations as tools for crime prevention and investigations. Flock has been described by critics as an example of mass surveillance, and their efficacy and effects on privacy and other civil liberties are the subject of public scrutiny, debate, and litigation.
Corporate history Flock was founded in 2017. It was co-founded by three Georgia Tech alumni: Garrett Langley, Paige Todd, and Matt Feury. Despite the article title, the linked source is an actual article and not a mere transcript of a podcast. It began as a side project in which the three co-founders built their first video surveillance cameras by hand around Langley's dining room table. When a DeKalb County detective told Langley that his camera product had helped with solving a home break-in, Langley called the two other co-founders and told them to quit their jobs. They joined the Summer 2017 batch of Y Combinator.
By 2024, Flock's fixed cameras had been installed in over 4,000 cities across 42 states. By April of that year, Flock employed over 900 people.
In June 2024, a judge in the Norfolk, Virginia, Circuit Court ruled that collecting location data from the city's 172 Flock ALPRs constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment and cannot be used as evidence in a criminal case when collected without a warrant. The ruling likened ALPR location databases to tracking devices, whose use by police was previously found unconstitutional without a warrant in United States v. Jones. Following this ruling, the company began to receive additional pushback from communities concerned about the legality of their operation. That October, Flock acquired Aerodome, a manufacturer of drones for law enforcement, and announced plans to introduce its own line of drones.
As of 2025, Flock is used by over 6,000 municipalities in the United States. The company had raised a total $950 million in venture funding, with a $7.5 billion valuation. Much of Flock's initial investment came from private venture capital funds associated with Peter Thiel, who has been criticized for his anti-democratic views and support for surveillance technologies. Some cities have stopped working with Flock over the use of its data in immigration enforcement and for community privacy concerns, while others have done so due to the company acting without the consent of the city.
In October 2025, Flock Safety announced a partnership with Amazon's Ring security products, where residents with Ring cameras would have the option to share video data to public safety agencies in legal investigations. The plan came under scrutiny after Amazon ran an ad during Super Bowl LX that depicted the Ring's "Search Party" function for finding missing or lost pets, enhanced with AI surveillance. A joint decision was made to cancel the planned integration.
Products
Falcon and Sparrow
The Falcon and Sparrow are automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) that monitor traffic and photograph the rear of all passing vehicles. Their software uses computer vision to read the vehicles' license plates and identify other distinguishing visual characteristics, sending that information to a central server via an LTE cellular network. Flock's servers then log the identifying data, with the time and location of the scan, in a searchable database and compare all results with the National Crime Information Center, as well as state and local police watchlists of cars that are reported stolen or otherwise of interest to the police, instantly alerting nearby officers upon a match.
ALPRs like Flock's differ from traffic enforcement cameras in that they are intended for surveillance and criminal investigations and do not perform any autonomous enforcement of traffic laws, though data from Flock cameras was previously used by police to issue a ticket. According to Jill Walker Rettberg, the cameras are designed to not be noticed in an urban environment. In July 2026, Flock cameras began being installed hidden inside the backs of speed readers to avoid vandalism.
Flock said that its system's ability to identify vehicles' visual features, which it calls "vehicle fingerprint technology", is unique among ALPR systems; they state that the system can identify vehicles' make, model, and color, as well as other distinguishing attributes such as mismatching colors, bumper stickers, dents, and temporary license plates, allowing investigators to search for recorded vehicles based on these characteristics. Flock said that its ALPRs can capture images of vehicles traveling at up to at distances of up to , regardless of lighting.
Flock says its ALPRs "focus on vehicles, not people", and are intended to help police identify vehicle details, not personal information. Flock additionally provides a tool called FreeForm, which allows police to search for anything in a scene with natural language. Public records requests showed that police were searching for characteristics of individuals, including by race, gender, clothing, height, tattoos, and perceived political affiliation.
Most Flock devices are powered by solar panels and rechargeable batteries, allowing them to operate in locations without access to utility power. Many are mounted on manufacturer-supplied poles, while others are affixed to existing lampposts or telephone poles. Flock also offers mobile trailers, which contain two pan–tilt–zoom (PTZ) cameras, one panoramic video camera, and deterrent devices such as flashing lights and a speaker.
Flock's primary competitor in the ALPR market is Motorola Solutions.
Flock offers software which integrates its ALPR and vehicle identification software into existing video camera systems, including IP cameras and Axon dashcams widely used in police vehicles. Jill Walker Rettberg stated Flock's network can be integrated into predictive policing platforms like Palantir.
Condor
Flock's Condor cameras are PTZ surveillance cameras primarily marketed as a method to avoid blind spots from fixed-angle cameras while having more than just ALPR functionality, such as automatically tracking people. Condor cameras can automatically zoom in on cars, people, faces, phone screens, and other objects nearby. According to marketing material on Flock's website, they can also be controlled manually.
Nova In May 2025, Flock was developing a new product called Nova that the company referred as a "public safety data platform", which would supplement ALPR data with information from data breaches, public records, and commercially available data in order to track specific individuals without a warrant. As of May 2025, Nova was already in use by law enforcement in an early access program. The Electronic Frontier Foundation described Flock Nova as a "dystopian panopticon". After 404 Media reporting, the company decided not to include information from data breaches in Nova.
Raven Launched in 2021, the Flock Raven is an audio gunfire locator, similar in function to ShotSpotter. The Raven records audio in 5-second increments, using artificial intelligence to analyze the sound clips for audible gunfire. When a gunshot is detected, the device estimates its location and alerts police. Like the ALPRs, they can be mounted on manufacturer-supplied poles and powered by solar panels. The company claims at least 1,200 gunshots have been detected by their system, with false positive and false negative rates below 1%.
In October 2025, Flock announced that their Raven devices would begin listening for "human distress", with advertisements showing police being alerted when the device picks up on screaming.
Alpha Flock produces a drone marketed as a "Drone as First Responder" system. It has one hardware variant named "Alpha". Drones can be stored in remotely-located "docks", then deployed to a given location with a remote trigger, including manual direction to GPS coordinates, or automated deployment to the location of license plate reader or gunshot detection alerts. The drones have both regular, thermal, and night-vision cameras, and can fly up to . The drones are equipped with license plate reader technology and can see plates from up to away.
The drones are marketed as a reactive rather than proactive solution, and they are intended to only leave their dock when deployed by a human or automated alert. The drones have been criticized for mass surveillance risks and militarization, as well as for collecting a more expansive set of data than traditional fixed-location cameras. The Electronic Frontier Foundation stated the drones could "capture footage from areas typically inaccessible to a casual patrol officer" such as people's backyards, roofs, and through windows.
OS Investigate In August 2026, Wired reported that limited prompts and code from an AI and text search-based Flock software tool called OS Investigate, previously known as Nightshift, had been leaked via publicly accessible Flock login pages. Wired stated other leaked code from Flock's website contained a list of tools available to OS Investigate, including the ability to correlate Flock-native data such as license plate scans and camera metadata, police department data such as arrest records and dispatch logs, and commercial databases including private personal data such as Social Security numbers and birth dates, as well as emails, phone numbers, and relatives or associated individuals.
Wired stated that the leaked prompts commonly involved searches based on area, time, or behavior, rather than searching based on an individual by license plate, including behavior such as someone visiting three or more retail locations within 3 days, or someone driving their car within a neighborhood in a given time frame. It also included the capability to do a "workup", which Flock describes as a "one-command background check" that can list a subject's name, date of birth, owned vehicles, and police records, as well as personal contact details, relatives, and online accounts.
Flock's CEO Garett Langley stated that Investigate OS was like a crime analyst that was "always awake, always watching out for you" and stated that investigators who try it get "addicted". Flock stated the product is currently being tested with a "small group of law enforcement partners", and that it is still being developed.
Business model Flock owns and operates all of its devices, leasing them to various categories of customers. Competitors primarily market their products to law enforcement agencies, but Flock also markets its products to community organizations and private entities. Some customers share data from their systems with police agencies.
Marketing materials center on efforts to reduce crime, and the company uses bird-themed product names. Until 2026, the sales team conducted surveillance demos in Georgia using a real youth gymnastics center, playgrounds, schools, and a pool.
Flock has developed relationships with several mayors. After the Denver city council voted to end the city's relationship with the company, the mayor negotiated a free six-month extension of the contract, for which no approval was required.
Political activity